Paula Bomer is a dangerous writer. The short stories in her debut collection are subversive portraits of the modern American family. From a husband who traces his internal crisis to witnessing his wife giving birth, to a mother who forces her young son on a rainy walk through a cemetery as she contemplates the detritus of her marriage, Bomers characters are hauntingly familiar. Their fear and rage, their failures and desires are our own. The mother of his children—The shitty handshake—She was everything to him—If there were two boats—Baby—A walk to the cemetery—Superstition—The second son—A galloping infection—Homesick